History of China

This page is about the history of China until the establishment of the People's Republic. For the history of the People's Republic of China specifically, see History of the People's Republic of China.

The history of China dates back to more than 5000 years ago. China, like all state societies, went through the slavery, feudal and capitalist modes of production until the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

Geography of China

Topographical map of China showing the Yellow river (in the North) and the Yangtze river (in the south)

According to Dr. Ken Hammond of the New Mexico State University, to understand how China materially developed throughout its history, it's important to understand the geography of the country.

The North China plain, at the mouth of the Yellow river, is to this day the agricultural heartland of China thanks to its low and flat terrain as well as the irrigation it receives from the Yellow river, and this plain is where Chinese civilisation first emerged.

Conversely, the South China plain is a region of hills and valleys, mostly south of the Yangtze river. Settlements in the south are divided off one another by these mountains, and river valleys tend to be where permanent settlements developed.

Rivers

The Yellow river has shaped China for millennia. It finds its source on the Tibetan Plateau, and snakes around Northern China until it empties into the Yellow sea, in the province of Shandong.

While the Yellow river has historically represented a challenge to China as it was prone to flooding, these floods brought with them fertile soil and irrigation to crops, and the river has always been primordial to the development of Chinese civilisation.

The Yangtze river further in the south has also been very important to Chinese civilisation historically, but less so than the Yellow river. It was still historically prone to flooding and consequently played a huge part in agriculture and sustaining life around it.

Prehistoric and early historic period

Traditional Chinese historiography

Chinese history has been studied by its people since Ancient times, and forms the basis of the traditional Chinese historiography. Their history begins around the time of the sage kings, or sage emperors, figures of antiquity and prehistory (i.e. that predate writing). Thus historiography, which is the writing of history itself, has been going on in China for millennia. Dr. Ken Hammond notes that in many places, this historiography has been proven correct thanks to archeological records found after the fact.

Sage kings Yao and Shun

A notable king in traditional Chinese historiography is Yao, who was the first to pass the throne down to a successor. Yao's own son was considered to be weak and decadent, and so Yao scoured his kingdom until he found Shun who had strong moral virtues and picked him as his successor.

The story of king Yao is an interesting contrast to the practices of succession in other historical dynasties in China, where succession was kept to a single family. According to Dr. Ken Hammond, this story is important in Chinese historiography because it highlights a quality, having a strong moral character, that was considered important in Chinese history.

This story, as well as the virtue of morals, would later found the premises for the Mandate of Heaven in China.

Early societies

Longshan black pottery vase dated around 2nd millenium BC.

According to Dr. Ken Hammond, the population of China itself has evolved in complex ways. The earliest people who would later call themselves the Chinese (Zhongguo ren, literally People of the Middle Country) lived in the North China plain. The earliest societies to emerge from this area were confederations of numerous tribal groups who defined themselves in contrast to those who were not Chinese, i.e. people who were not civilised. A number of terms exist in Chinese to define these people that are best translated to as "barbarians" in English (barbarians being what the Ancient Greeks similarly called any people who were not Greek).

Excavated pottery remains suggest that a single culture came to dominate the whole of the North China plain some 4000 to 6000 years ago. Characteristic pottery was discovered as originating from Dragon Mountain (Longshan), and later showed up in other archeological sites.

Writing

One key element that made this first Chinese society define themselves as civilised (as opposed to what they defined as their barbarian neighbours) was a system of writing, which their neighbours did not possess. There is not much transitional evidence to the emergence of writing in China. That is to say, archeological evidence shows that once writing appears in China, it showed up as a fairly fully developed system, suggesting that writing appeared fairly quickly.

Mass migration

As Chinese civilisation expanded, neighbouring peoples, particularly in the South, were either displaced or assimilated. The Vietnamese and Thai people, for example, formerly lived in southern China and were displaced as part of this expansion to the South.

Some of these populations were forced further west, on higher elevation, and have remained there since then. Today, they are generally called hill tribe communities, and many of these groups retain distinctive identities in China: they retain their own language, their own cultural practice, and their own religion. Today, they constitute around 5% of the population of China. There are 54 such officially recognized ethnic minorities in China

This process happened around 2500 to 2000 years ago.

The first dynasties

The emergence of bronze was critical to China's future development. Bronze gave rise to an industry of mining, smelting, and shaping the metal into tools, weapons, jewellery, etc. which created culture in the various populations that inhabited what is now China. This transition from the neolithic to the bronze age also marked the transition from prehistory to history.

The Xia dynasty

According to Dr. Hammond, traditional Chinese historiography considers the Xia to be the first dynasty in Chinese history. Dr. Hammond notes however that "the Xia itself is actually sort of a transitional period". The Xia did not leave any written records, and as such the Xia period is understood in archeology to be the clear, sharp "demarcation that indicates the emergence of a very different political entity [from what existed before]", the Xia.

The Xia period began roughly around 2200 BCE. The Xia built palace architecture, large structures built on rammed earth platforms (compressed and firm layers of dirt), a method that would keep being used in China for the coming millennia. The Xia also saw the emergence of class society; as agriculture and pottery was creating a surplus of food, fewer farmers were needed, and a class of "non-farmers" (artisans, warriors, spiritual leaders and bureaucrats) emerged, forming the basis of Chinese class society.

Dr. Hammond theorizes that this emergent class of leaders solidified their power by performing rituals for the populace. The Xia's ancestors performed totemism, a practice in which animal spirits are associated with particular tribal or clan families. In the Xia dynasty, the worship of totems of one particular family was transformed into a royal ancestral cult. In other words, not only the spirits of animals, but the spirits of the ancestors of the present day rulers came to be seen as divine powers. This further solidified the power of the royal family and laid the foundation for monarchy in Chinese society.

The Xia civilisation ultimately did not leave many details as to their way of life, and most of their records came from the subsequent Shang dynasty, who shared many consistent features with the Xia.

The Shang dynasty

The Shang dynasty, named after the royal family, begins around 1500 BCE. Dr. Hammond notes that traditional Chinese historiography uses a very elaborate and precise chronology which would place the Shang dynasty at 1766 BC, but that modern archeological investigations cannot confirm this date, and so the actual date of their foundation remains vague.

Oracle bones divination

The abdominal parts of two tortoise shells with divinatory inscriptions excavated at the site of Yinxu, Anyang, Henan, China.

The Shang dynasty has left many written records about their life, as they performed oracle bone divination. In this practice, people would ask a question to the royal family's ancestors on either oxen shoulder blade bone or the underside (inside) of turtle shells. The question would be carved on the bone by a diviner, the class of people who could read and write. The bone would then be poked by a sharp, hot object during daily ceremonies, which caused it to crack. The way the bone cracked was then interpreted as an answer by the ancestors to the question carved into the bone. The Shang took their written records even further and kept records on the results of the divination. This means they kept record of not only the questions, but also the answers and actual outcome of the divinations.

Oracle bone divination was so commonplace in the Shang period that to this day, tens of thousands of bones have been dug up.

Dr. Hammond notes that these divination rituals were important to maintain the power of the dynasty and diviners, but the bronze culture was also equally important. Bronze cutlery (such as wine cups, plates or pans) were used to present offerings to the ruler's ancestors. After these offerings and sacrifices, which took place in great halls, the king would offer the "physical remains" (the offerings that had not been consumed by the ancestors) to the populace in great feasts, as a way to remind the people of his wealth and power.

Succession of power

The Shang dynasty had a novel way of handling succession. In their time, life expectancy was not very long -- one could hope to live up to 30 on average. It was thus very common that the Shang king would die before his oldest son was old enough to succeed him. Because of this, the kingship passed from oldest to youngest brother. Then the eldest son of the eldest king would take over, and the process would repeat. 26 kings were recorded during the Shang period. which lasted for around 500 years (an average of one king every twenty years).

The Shang also built royal capitals, which was a continuation of the Xia palace architecture on rammed earth structures. However, they didn't seem to stay in them a very long time: they had nine capitals during their 500 years rule. These buildings were bigger and more decorated than their Xia predecessors, likely as a way to display their wealth and power.

Shang state

Approximate territory of the Shang dynasty, in green.

The Shang state was a federation of people. In other words, there was the Shang ruling family, their blood relations, and then people who were not blood relations to that family but were part of the Shang state. The Shang dynasty spread relatively far, and the federated people that were part of this state played a primordial role in its upkeep and border security. As such, due to the size of the Shang empire, reports, letters and communication from the king to his subordinates would be sent in writing, which characterises the Shang as a literate state.

The Shang state was quite elaborate and practised division of labour from early on. Bronze objects, for example, were made with casts in which molten bronze was poured in. Their bronze industry -- mining the metal, smelting, refining, blending the metals together, the design of the objects, etc. was all organised by the Shang state and required different labourers and artisans for each step of the process. That involved the organisation of a consequent number of people as well as running activities at a number of sites (the mines, for example, were not located in the same place as the furnaces).

This elaborate, organised system of production required that the Shang state had a capacity to sustain its people, e.g. feeding them, clothing them, housing them, etc. This is how archeologists know that the Shang also had an elaborate taxation system, which also appeared on oracle bones. Tributes were paid by subordinates who were part of this federation to the Shang royal family and formed the basis of taxation revenue. Furthermore, the organisation of the mining industry further established the authority of the royal family and their kin.

The Shang practiced slavery, which was the first major mode of production in the world and allowed them to sustain this elaborate society and state. Slaves, as was usual in the earliest incarnation of the institution, were usually prisoners of war and criminals.

Decline of the Shang period

The people not under Shang authority were a constant concern and often came up in oracle bones. Since the Shang recorded every outcome of oracle bone divination, these records show that there were frequent devastating raids from outside populations. Notably, people were recorded as being taken away as slaves during these raids.

Security was a critical function of the Shang state but eventually found itself in a contradiction. The Shang dynasty needed to deploy and maintain soldiers in the border regions, where the tributary non-Shang people lived, so that they could receive their tribute and not have it stolen during raids. Over time, this created resentment from these populations, especially when security started breaking down and raids became more frequent.

This unrest eventually boiled over to rebellion, when the tributary peoples to the Shang overthrew the dynasty and established the Zhou dynasty as their successors.

The Zhou conquest

Premises

The Zhou people, located on the western side of the Shang Empire, were a tributary community of the empire, with a mythological history of their own. Their early history involves a change from a hunting-gathering society, before developing to an agricultural society, going back to hunting and gathering, and finally settling down as more permanent farmers. According to Dr. Hammond, these societal changes reflect the environmental conditions at the time (some 4000 years ago), when northwestern China was wetter, cooler, and the weather had not settled permanently, which made food sources change over time.

After the Zhou settled into sedentary agricultural communities, they became affiliated as a tributary state to the Zhou, a process that left them resentful of their new lords. Around the late 12th century BCE (-1150), as the Shang dynasty was facing external raids they could not defend against, the Zhou leaders decided that the Shang were unfit to rule and they should replace them.

War against the Shang

Tai Zhou articulated this ambition which his people carried out over the the next three generations. The Zhou people followed the Wei river eastward and resettled closer to the Shang. Secondly, they sustained greater communication with other subordinated people of the Shang Empire, particulary on the west side of the Shang territory so as to create the alliances necessary to overthrow the Shang kings. Finally, around the year 1050 BC, the Zhou initiated a war against the Shang. According to Dr. Hammond, the war seems to have been initiated by Wen Zhou, referred to as a king in historical records, but his son king Wu was the one who took the throne from the Shang.

While the exact date of this war has been lost, paleoastronomers have narrowed down the range of possible dates to within a few years of 1045 BCE based on the study of celestial events described at that time.

On that date, the Zhou people and their allies marched to the capital of the Shang (modern day Anyang), and set themselves up on the west side of a river. On the morning of the battle, the young king Wu gave a speech calling for the overthrow of the Shang and then led his armies forward into the city. A number of ancient documents that have survived to this day describe the battle that took place on that day; the Classic of Documents contains a purported transcript of the speech king Wu gave on that day as well as a document describing the battle.

The battle concluded with the killing of the Shang king; the Shang state was thus seized by the Zhou and king Wu crowned.

The duke of Zhou

King Wu was still quite young when he seized the state from the Shang dynasty. King Wen had a younger brother, who is only known as the duke of Zhou in historical records, who then served as an advisor to the young king. He was seen as a very sage and moral character, as he could have easily usurped the throne from his older brother due to Wu's young age, but instead was happy to serve as an advisor.

The duke of Zhou thus became a very important figure in Chinese history, even serving as a model for Confucius some 500 years later.

Migration of the Shang

Although the Shang had been defeated, the Zhou did not exterminate them. The Shang were moved away from the capital of Anyang to the south and east and given a territory of their own, made into subordinates of the Zhou. They were allowed to retain their customs, including the worship of their royal family's ancestors. To this day, certain families in southeastern Anhui province trace their family all the way back to the Shang.

Establishment of Shenyang capital

At the same time, the Zhou moved the capital (and thus center) of their empire from Anyang back to their own ancestral homelands in the valley of the Wei river. They build a new capital at Shenyang (modern-day city of Xian), which served as a capital for a number of later dynasties.

The Zhou also established a pattern for the design of capital cities which was later picked up by subsequent dynasties. Their city was designed to be the physical representation of a well-ordered world, drawing back to the Mandate of Heaven. The city of Shenyang was laid out as a square surrounded by a wall, and oriented on a north-south axis with a compound in the northern part that formed the residence of the ruler. In the southern part of the city were residential areas for the common people, markets, and other centers of activity for daily life. Surrounding the city in the four cardinal directions (north, west, south, east) were ritual complexes -- altars and other temples for the performing of sacrifices and other ceremonies.

Creation of the Mandate of Heaven

To understand the Mandate of Heaven, it is important to understand what Heaven is in China. According to Dr. Hammond, the Chinese people in earlier history (including the Zhou) worshipped what we translate as Heaven (tian). Tian should not be thought of as the Christian Heaven, but rather sort of a natural operating system, the overarching mechanism that governs the functioning of everything in the universe. Tian should be understood as an all-encompassing organic system, and not as a divinity or god. However, it does have the capacity for action. One such capacity is the bestowing of the Mandate of Heaven, or the withdrawing thereof.

The Zhou were the ones to develop this doctrine to justify their conquest of the Shang, arguing that there is a "proper" way for society to be organised focalised around a good ruler. since the Shang were unable to protect them from raids (and thus did not maintain the livelihood and prosperity of the people), they were unfit to rule and Heaven (tian) had withdrawn the Mandate from the Shang and given it to the Zhou.

The Mandate of Heaven would become central to all political transitions from one dynasty (or form of government) to another, even enduring to this day in the People's Republic. The Mandate formed instant justification for an overthrow of a dynasty: if one succeeded in seizing the state, then they had clearly received the Mandate of Heaven. If they failed, then they clearly had not received the Mandate and thus the old dynasty would keep ruling.

For the first time, the state was not the property of a ruling family but instead, drawing on earlier mythical accounts of kings Yao and Shun, considered to be something that involved the moral qualities of the rulers. The Mandate is bestowed and removed by forces outside of human control, and as such the state belongs to the dynasty that was picked by Heaven to rule.

Fragmentation of the Zhou kingdom

Early successes

The first two to three hundred years of Zhou rule were successful; that period was marked by territorial expansion (particularly in the south and southeast) and population growth. By the 8th century BCE, the Zhou state was four times larger than the territory controlled by the Shang at the time of conquest.

These successes lead to new administrative challenges. Governing the entire realm from the capital became difficult as it grew due to the sheer distance to cover, and the Zhou kings started delegating power to members of the royal family: brothers, cousins, etc. were sent to these regions to fulfil administrative roles. However, the Zhou soon ran out of family members to appoint and turned to military leaders, loyal to the dynasty. The practice in the Zhou kingdom was that the military commander who brought new territory to the state would be appointed its political supervisor.

In the first few reigns of Zhou kings, this system worked well. The Zhou could appoint loyal individuals and let them take care of administrating remote regions on the border of the kingdom.

Administrative challenges

As time went by, the monarchy became an established institution -- not solely dependent on a moral king, but on the entire royal family. Members of the Zhou clan, who grew up in the royal capital, knew that they would be given a title to administrate eventually, and became complacent about it. At the same time, in local communities around the kingdom, the delegates managing these territories were the descendents of the original appointees, and thus they did not feel loyal to the Zhou dynasty, whose presence in these regions was almost null; they resent that they have to send taxes and tribute to the capital. This sentiment was particularly strong in the fertile southern and southeastern areas that produced a lot of food, but still had to send most of their surplus to the king as tribute.

Thus these local rulers started to hold back some of the tribute they were supposed to send, while at the same time subverting the established hierarchy; records show, in fact, that at the beginning of the 8th century BCE, certain local administrators (appointed by the Zhou royal family) begin to refer to themselves as kings instead of dukes, most notably in local official documents.

Arrival of the Qin and moving of the capital

In normal times, as the Zhou king heard of these developments, he would have sent troops to restore his authority on these tributary provinces. However, at the start of the 8th century BCE, a new people emerged from the western frontier of the Zhou kingdom, called the Qin. They started to raid into Zhou territory, which prompted them to move their capital far eastward, at the site of what is today the city of Luoyang, which remained a very important capital and cultural center for later dynasties.

This move to a more secure area, which made the Zhou abandon their ancestral homeland in Shenyang. Because of this, the Zhou were unable to attend to the matter of local administrative appointees proclaiming themselves as kings, which was a challenge to the rule of the Zhou; as more local rulers proclaimed themselves king over their appointed lands, the legitimacy of the Zhou rule was called into question.

The crisis took several centuries to mature: despite the challenges, the Zhou dynasty remained on the throne and ruled from Luoyang. While tributary rulers kept paying some amount of respect to the Zhou dynasty, it became clear that the Zhou did not control any territory beyond their capital.

Spring and Autumn period

From the middle of the 8th century BCE to the 5th century BCE, China saw the Spring and Automn period develop. This period gets its name from the book of the Spring and Autumn Annals, a record that described the year to year events happening in the tributary state of Lu.

The rulers of Lu claimed that they were descended from the duke of Zhou, which gave them some legitimacy on the throne over other minor states vying for power. The state of Lu was also the homeland of Confucius, whom is believed to have edited the Spring and Autumn Annals.

The Annals describe a process of sheer breakdown of the Zhou authority. As local rulers start calling themselves kings, so do they start acting like one: they set up royal courts in their holdings, they begin to perform rituals which are normally reserved for the king, they start to wear the clothing appropriate to a king, they demand the ritual gestures from their advisors that they themselves should show to the king, etc.

Rise of the hegemons

With the breakdown of their single, unifying authority, it becomes impossible for the Zhou kings to restore order in the kingdom. Self-proclaimed kings started conquering their neighbours, and the kingdom erupted into war rapidly after that. In Chinese records, these kings are called ba wang, translated as hegemons, understood as "kings in power, but not in right". In other words, these kings are able to rule because they have the power to do so, but they are not legitimate rulers as they haven't received the Mandate of Heaven as it is still with the Zhou.

This period lasted a few hundred years and saw the number of states increase in China; from a single unified state in the 8th century BCE, there are more than 250 existing by the 5th century BCE, some of them consisting only of a single town and agricultural fields. Each of them, no matter their size, claim to be a legitimate sovereign government. While they still acknowledge the rulership of the Zhou to some extent, this is only a performative exercise as the Zhou kings exercise no real authority outside of their domain.

End of the Spring and Autumn Period

Around the year 480 BCE, the breakdown and fragmentation of China begins to reverse as strong states emerge and start to conquer weaker states. The number of states goes from 250 to about 50-100 in just three centuries. In the 3rd century BCE, only a dozen or so states remained in China.

As this breakdown process takes place over China, a new class slowly emerges: the shi (士), a class of professional political administrators and advisors to kings and rulers. Their role is reminiscent of the diviners of the Xia and Shang period, who could read and write, but is wholly a product of the situation at the time: as the number of royal courts proliferate, there came a large demand for capable administrators and advisors. The shur travelled the land offering their services to different kings for a period of time, often creating fierce competition between kings for the most capable advisor. Often, they became a symbol of a ruler: a king who had a famous or capable advisor at his side was regarded as a good ruler.

The proliferation of this class also gave rise to philosophy in China (and thus Chinese philosophy), as the shi would debate each other and, in this era of great turmoil and war, began to question the fundamental order of China and rulership to understand why the Zhou kingdom broke down, and how statesmen could avoid this fate in the future.

Likely the earliest depiction of Confucius, from a Western Han (202 BCE - 9 CE) fresco, found in a tomb in Shandong Province, China.

Confucius

Confucius, or Kong Fuzi in Chinese, was a shi. Born in the Lu state circa 551 BCE.

Later Han and the Three Kingdoms

Intellectual ferment in the 11th century

The rise of the Ming

The coming of the West

The new culture movement

References